This is a List of famines in China, part of the series of lists of disasters in China. Between 108 BC and 1911 AD, there were no fewer than 1,828 recorded famines in China, or once nearly every year in one province or another. The famines varied in severity. [1] [2]
| Name | Time | Region | Context | Estimated number of dead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 875–884 | Peasant rebellion in China inspired by famine; Huang Chao captured capital | |||
| Chinese famine of 1333-1337 | 1333–1337 [3] | 6 million [4] | ||
| Hongxi famine | 1425 | |||
| Jingtai Slough | 1440-1455 [5] | Zhejiang, Shanxi, Shaanxi, northern Jiangsu, Shandong | Cold conditions | |
| 1477-1487 | ||||
| Hongzhi famine | 1494-1495 | |||
| 1526 | Beijing | |||
| 1543-1544 | Zhejiang | |||
| Wanli Slough I | 1586-1589 | La Niña climate disruption | Most lethal famine of the 1500's | |
| Wanli Slough II | 1615-1619 | Drought, flood and sandstorms from deforestation. | ||
| 1630– 1641 | Northwestern China | The Chongzhen drought, leading to the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644 | 2 million | |
| Haizi famine | 1755– 1756 | Drought and flood | 70% of the poorer farmers of Rugao county [6] | |
| 1810– 1811 | Hebei | Flood | 11 million [7] | |
| The Great Jiaqing Famine in Yunnan | 1815– 1817 | Yunnan, with hunger in most of China | Microthermal climate disaster tied to the eruption of the Tambola volcano [8] | Tens to hundreds of thousands |
| 1846– 1851 | Hebei, Zhejiang and Hubei | Flood | 15 million (45 million population decrease, with unknown proportion emigrating) [7] | |
| 1857 | Flooding in Hubei and Shandong | 8 million | ||
| 1851–1873 | Nian Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion and drought | 10–30 million people [9] [10] | ||
| Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–79 | 1876– 1879 | Mostly Shanxi (5.5 million dead), also in Zhili (2.5 million), Henan (1 million), Shaanxi and Shandong (0.5 million). [11] | Drought, decades of declining grain production relative to population size. [12] | 9.5 to 13 million [13] |
| Northern Chinese Famine of 1901 | 1901 | Shanxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia | The drought from 1898-1901 led to a fear of famine, which was a leading cause of Boxer Rebellion. The famine eventually came in Spring 1901. [14] | 0.2 million in Shanxi, the worst hit province. |
| Chinese famine of 1906–1907 | 1906-07 | northern Anhui, northern Jiangsu | 20 to 25 million [15] | |
| Chinese famine of 1920-1921 | 1920–1921 | Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, southern Zhili (Hebei) | 0.5 million [16] | |
| Chinese famine of 1928–30 | 1928–1930 | Northern China | Drought, wartime constraints, and inefficiency of relief [17] | 6 to 10 million [18] |
| Sichuan famine of 1936-37 | 1936-1937 | Sichuan, Henan and Gansu | Drought and civil war. | 5 million in Sichuan, [19] [20] up to 50 million displaced as 'famine refugees' |
| 1942–1943 famine | 1942–1943 | Mainly Henan | Second Sino-Japanese War | 0.7 to 1 million [21] |
| Great Chinese Famine | 1959–1961 [22] | Half of the country, in particular Anhui (18% died), Chongqing (15% died), Sichuan (13% died), Guizhou (11% died), Hunan (8% died) [23] | Great Leap Forward, Floods, Droughts, Typhoons, Insect Invasion [24] | 15 to 55 million [25] [23] [26] |
In China famines have been an ongoing problem for thousands of years. From the Shang dynasty (16th–11th century BC) until the founding of modern China, chroniclers have regularly described recurring disasters. There have always been times and places where rains have failed, especially in the northwest of China, and this has led to famine.
It was the task of the Emperor of China to provide, as necessary, to famine areas and transport foods from other areas and to distribute them. The reputation of an emperor depended on how he succeeded. National famines occurred even when the drought areas were too large, especially when simultaneously larger areas of flooded rivers were over their banks and thus additionally crop failures occurred, or when the central government did not have sufficient reserves. If an emperor could not prevent a famine, he lost prestige and legitimacy. It was said that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Qing China built an elaborate system designed to minimize famine deaths. The system was destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s. [27] [28]
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every inhabited continent in the world has experienced a period of famine throughout history. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Southeast and South Asia, as well as Eastern and Central Europe, suffered the greatest number of fatalities due to famine. Deaths caused by famine declined sharply beginning in the 1970s, with numbers falling further since 2000. Since 2010, Africa has been the most affected continent in the world by famine.
The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign within China from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to transform the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized society through the formation of people's communes. Millions of people died in mainland China during the Great Leap, with estimates based on demographic reconstruction ranging from 15 to 55 million, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest or second-largest famine in human history.
The Great Chinese Famine was a famine that occurred between 1959 and 1961 in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962. It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions. The most stricken provinces were Anhui, Chongqing (15%), Sichuan (13%), Guizhou (11%) and Hunan (8%).
The 1931 China floods, or the 1931 Yangtze–Huai River floods, occurred from June to August 1931 in China, hitting major cities such as Wuhan, Nanjing and beyond, and eventually culminated in a dike breach along Lake Gaoyou on 25 August 1931.
A granary is a storehouse or room in a barn for threshed grain or animal feed. Ancient or primitive granaries are most often made of pottery. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals and from floods.
Famine had been a recurrent feature of life in the South Asian subcontinent countries of India and Bangladesh, most notoriously under British rule. Famines in India resulted in millions of deaths over the course of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Famines in British India were severe enough to have a substantial impact on the long-term population growth of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Orissa famine of 1866 affected the east coast of India from Madras northwards, an area covering 180,000 miles and containing a population of 47,500,000; the impact of the famine, however, was greatest in the region of Orissa, now Odisha, which at that time was quite isolated from the rest of India. In Odisha, the total number who died as a result of the famine was at least a million, roughly one third of the population.
The 1920 Haiyuan earthquake occurred on December 16 in Haiyuan County, Ningxia Province, Republic of China at 19:05:53. It was also called the 1920 Gansu earthquake because Ningxia was a part of Gansu Province when the earthquake occurred. It caused destruction in the Lijunbu-Haiyuan-Ganyanchi area and was assigned the maximum intensity on the Mercalli intensity scale. About 258,707-273,407 died, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes in China and disasters in China by death toll.
Yang Jisheng is a Chinese journalist and author. His work include Tombstone (墓碑), a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward, and The World Turned Upside Down (天地翻覆), a history of the Cultural Revolution. Yang joined the Communist Party in 1964 and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1966. He promptly joined Xinhua News Agency, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. His loyalty to the party was destroyed by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 was marked by drought-induced crop failures and subsequent widespread starvation. Between 9.5 and 13 million people in China died mostly in Shanxi province, but also in Zhili, Henan and Shandong. The population reduction in censuses, which include famine migration, shows a drop of 23 million people, among which Shanxi lost 48%, Shaanxi lost 25%, Henan lost 22%. The drought began in 1875 and was influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
The Chinese famine of 1928–1930 occurred as widespread drought hit Northwestern and Northern China, most notably in the provinces of Henan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Mortality is estimated to be within 6 million, which already included deaths from famine-led diseases. The inefficiency of relief has been pointed out as a factor which aggravated the famine.
Frank Dikötter is a Dutch historian who specialises in modern China. Dikötter has been Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong since 2006. In Patient Zero (2003) and Narcotic Culture (2004), Dikötter argued that the impact of the prohibition of opium on the Chinese people led to greater harm than the effects of the drug itself. Dikötter is the author of The People's Trilogy, which consists of Mao's Great Famine (2010), The Tragedy of Liberation (2013), and The Cultural Revolution (2016), providing an overview of Communist-led China.
The Henan Famine of 1942–1943 occurred in Henan, most particularly within the eastern and central part of the province. The famine occurred within the context of the Second Sino-Japanese War and resulted from a combination of natural and human factors. Anthony Garnaut put the death toll to be "well under one million", probably around 700,000. While Lloyd Eastman puts it between 2 and 3 million dead. 15 years later Henan was struck by the deadlier Great Chinese famine.
The Persian famine of 1917–1919 was a period of widespread mass starvation and disease in Iran under the rule of the Qajar dynasty during World War I. The famine took place in the territory of Iran, which, despite declaring neutrality, was occupied by the forces of the British, Russian, and Ottoman empires whose occupation contributed to the famine. So far, few historians have researched the famine, making it an understudied subject of modern history.
The Persian famine of 1870–1872 was a period of mass starvation and disease in Iran (Persia) between 1870 and 1872 under the rule of Qajar dynasty.
The Bengal famine of 1943-44 was a major famine in the Bengal province in British India during World War II. An estimated 2.1 million, out of a population of 60.3 million, died from starvation, malaria and other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions, and lack of health care. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and social fabric.
The Chinese famine of 1906–1907 struck the middle and lower course of Huai River in Qing Dynasty from Autumn 1906 to Spring 1907, administratively in northern Anhui and northern Jiangsu provinces. This Chinese famine was directly caused by the 1906 China floods, which hit the Huai River particularly hard and destroyed both the summer and autumn harvest.
The authorities are assured that in Shansi five millions and a half, in Honan one million, in Shantung half a million, and in Chili two millions and a half have perished, and there is unfortunately too much reason to believe that the enormous total of nine and a half millions is substantially correct.
In Gansu the estimated mortality was 2.5 to 3 million [...] In Shaanxi, out of a population of 13 million, an estimated 3 million died of hunger or disease
...1936 famine, the product of severe drought compounded by civil war, killed up to five million people in Sichuan and led to reports of widespread cannibalism.
A detailed survey organized by the Nationalist government in 1943 of the impact of the famine came up with a toll of 1,484,983, broken down by county. The official population registers of Henan show a net decline in population from 1942 to 1943 of one million people, or 3 per cent of the population. If we assume that the natural rate of increase in the population before the famine was 2 per cent, [...] Comparison with the diminution in the size of age cohorts born during the famine years suggests that the official Nationalist figure includes population loss through excess mortality and declined fertility migration, which leaves a famine death toll of well under 1 million.
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